NAME

       dbview - View dBase III files

SYNOPSIS

       dbview   [-b|--browse]  [-d  delim|  --delimiter  delim]  [-D|--deleted]  [-e|--description]  [-h|--help]
       [-i|--info] [-o|--omit] [-v|--version] [-r|--reserve] [-t|--trim] dbfile

DESCRIPTION

       Dbview is a little tool that will display dBase III files.  You can also use it to convert your old  .dbf
       files for further use with Unix.  It should also work with dBase IV files, but this is mostly untested.

       By  default  dbview  displays  the  contents  of  a  dBase  III  or IV database file.  This is be done by
       displaying both the name of the field itself and its value.  At the end of  every  record  a  newline  is
       appended.

OPTIONS

       If no option given dbview only displays the database in its most friendly way.

       --browse, -b
              switches  into browse mode.  Using this mode no fieldnames will be displayed, instead every record
              will displayed in one line using a delimiter to separate fields.

       --delimiter, -d delimiter
              The default delimiter in browse mode is the colon sign ``:''.  This parameter overrides it.   This
              can be useful especially if you plan to examine the output with scripts.

       --deleted, -D
              displays deleted records as well as the delete state in each record in the database.

       --description, -e
              displays the field description of the database.

       --help, -h
              displays a complete (or short) help screen.

       --info, -i
              displays  some  (partially  technical)  information  about the database like number of records and
              length of each record.

       --omit, -o
              omits displaying the whole database.  Using this parameter can be useful if you're only interested
              in the structure.

       --reserve, -r
              Normally  fieldnames  are  converted  into  a  more  friendly  format.  They are stored in capital
              letters, but that looks like shouting.  This parameter supresses the conversion.

       --trim, -t
              When this option is specified, leading and trailing spaces are omitted.  This might be useful when
              in browse mode.

       --version, -v
              displays version and exits.

NOTES

       As  dBase  is DOS, umlauts are stored using a different code table (namely ASCII) than most modern unices
       (namely ANSI).  If you encounter such a file, I would recommend piping the output through recode(1)  with
       ibmpc:latin1 as it's argument.

       If you want to examine the output generated by the browse mode, just take cut(1) and set its delimiter to
       the used delimiter or take awk(1) and continue.

COPYRIGHT

       Dbview is free software. It is based on routines from unknown source that  I  found  on  nic.funet.fi  in
       /pub/msdos/languages/c as dbase.c.  The file contained the following notice:

       These functions are provided by Valour Software as a gift.

       I  have modified and included this file and wrote a skeleton around it.  All together provides a powerful
       tool for dBase III and IV database manipulation under Unix.

       I mainly have written this program, because I've got several dbase files containing important information
       for  me.   As  I  won't  go  running DOS everytime I need some of the stored information, I had to find a
       viewer that runs unter Unix, resp. Linux, but unfortunately didn't find one.  So it was my turn.

       This package as a whole is published under the GNU Public License, which is a great invention.

       It wasn't the intention to write a freaking viewer and reinvent  the  wheel  again.   Instead  dbview  is
       intend to be used in conjunction with your favourite unix text utilities like cut, recode and more.

       Martin Schulze
       Infodrom Oldenburg
       joey@infodrom.north.de

SEE ALSO

       recode(1), more(1), awk(1), cut(1).